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“Well?” Lula asked when I hung up.
“She’s not there. She never came home.”
Lula opened the box of doughnuts and took a Boston cream. We didn’t have to fight over it because they were all Boston cream. She got herself a cup of coffee, sat in Connie’s chair, and scanned through the email.
“Here’s something interesting,” she said. “It’s a court bulletin. One of our bondees turned up dead. Self-inflicted gunshot wound. Twelve of them. Paul Mori. It says that we bonded him out two weeks ago.”
“I know that name. He was bonded out the same day asCarpenter Beedle. Vinnie took a coin as security, and I couldn’t find it.”
“What kind of coin?”
“His bond application didn’t say.”
I called Vinnie.
“Now what?” Vinnie said.
“When are you coming into the office?”
“I don’t know. I’m still in AC. Harry’s having a board of directors meeting, if you know what I mean.”
“I need to talk to you about Paul Mori.”
“The dry cleaner? He turned out to be a real pain in the ass. I was at the courthouse to write a bond for Beedle and I ran into Mori. We take our dry cleaning to him. He needed to get bailed out, so he gave me a deal on dry cleaning and a commemorative coin for security. The dry-cleaning deal was sweet. I didn’t care about the coin. I just took it to humor him. And then a couple days ago he came in and said he wanted the coin back. He was going to give me a big bag of money for it, but I didn’t have the coin. I told him I lost it and he went nuts. Almost ripped my shirt off, yelling that I was lying. Connie stun gunned him and dragged him out of the office. A car drove up; two guys shoved him into the backseat and drove off with him.”
“How did you lose the coin?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to it. I bonded Mori out and then I had to turn around and right away bond Beedle out. Beedle’s mother was there. Nice lady. She was upset. I had to walk them to her car.”
“What did the coin look like?”
“It was supposed to be old. Knights Templar. Like inIndianaJones. I don’t think it was real, but it was cool anyway. I gotta go. Harry’s giving me the sign.”
“What sign?”
“Like he’s gonna kill me if I don’t get off the phone.”
The line went dead.
“Pull up the Paul Mori file,” I said to Lula. “Print it out for me.”
The front door opened, and Grandma walked in. She was dressed in tight jeans, motorcycle boots, a white T-shirt, and a black leather jacket.
“I thought I’d stop by in case you still needed some extra muscle,” she said.
“Did my mother see you leave the house dressed like this?” I asked her.
“No. I sneaked out when she was cleaning up in the kitchen,” Grandma said. “I left her a note. I said I was at church.”
“Girl, you look bitchin’,” Lula said.
“I wore this getup to a Halloween party last year,” Grandma said. “I was hoping I’d get a chance to use it again. What’s up for today? I was at the bakery earlier and Eleanor said Connie is still missing.”
“Her car is parked in Pino’s lot, but no one’s seen Connie, and her mother hasn’t heard from her,” I said.
“That’s terrible,” Grandma said. “That’s real worrisome.”
I took the Mori printout from Lula. “Paul Mori was seventy years old. Owned Mori Dry Cleaning. He was charged with indecent exposure. Got into an argument with a female customer and mooned her. She got a picture of him on her cell phone and reported him to the police.”
